March 12-18 2012 - 3,550 New Record Daily Highs, 3,109 Record Warmest Daily Low Temperatures In US

The March heat wave went from extreme to downright unprecedented in parts of the Midwest on Tuesday, as Chicago, Detroit and areas all the way north into Canada shattered longstanding records. So many records have been broken — 3,550 record daily highs and 3,109 daily warm low temperature records during the March 12-18 period — that it’s difficult to sort through them all. In Chicago, where the temperature rose to 85°F, an all-time record high for the month and the record sixth March 80-degree day, a National Weather Service (NWS) forecaster described the situation as “unreal.” Through Tuesday, the city had set warm temperature records seven days in a row — with more records likely to fall Wednesday and possibly Thursday.

"It is remarkable enough to watch longstanding all-time record temps be threatened . . . but the total scope (duration and intensity) of this warm spell is something that has historic and unlikely to be matched in our liftetime,” read an NWS forecast discussion on Tuesday.

With temperatures forecast to once again soar into the 80s today in the Windy City, think about the warmth this way — as an NWS meteorologist noted, only once in the 140 recorded years of weather observations has April produced as many 80°F days as have been observed so far this March in Chicago.

The volume of records being set during this long-duration heat wave is staggering. On March 18 alone there were 1,597 warm temperature records set or tied in the U.S., compared to just 58 cold temperature records. For the year-to-date, there have been 14,737 warm temperature records set or tied, compared to 1,296 cold records — a ratio of about 11-to-1.